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Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide

This guide was created as an overview of the Linux Operating System, geared toward new users as an exploration tour and getting started guide, with exercises at the end of each chapter.
For more advanced trainees it can be a desktop reference, and a collection of the base knowledge needed to proceed with system and network administration. This book contains many real life examples derived from the author's experience as a Linux system and network administrator, trainer and consultant. They hope these examples will help you to get a better understanding of the Linux system and that you feel encouraged to try out things on your own.

This is a reconditioned notebook and comes with limited waranty from the manufacturers. It was running winxpsp2 and yesterday it just refused to boot. The operating system boots to the boot choices (as you would get when you press the F8-key). The normal boot would just hang there in the menu itself. The 'last good configuration' would get past the menu into a black-blank screen and remain their for eternity. All the safe-mode options get stuck loading 'atisgkaf.sys' and remains their for eternity.
A google search with the atisgkaf.sys pulled out numerous results all talking about winxpsp2 issue where the victim recently installed sp2 then the problem arised. Mine is not such a case, the winxpsp2 was installed when the os was installed and it had performed w/o any problem from the installed date till yesterday (which must be around ...4 months).
All attempts to recover the system with winxpsp2 (the same cd used on install) failed. The installer hangs on 'setup is starting windows' for eternity.
Next I decided to backup the data before trying anything else, so i insert the Knoppix5.0.1 Live CD and then the first sign of 'BAD RAM' shows in the form of Kernel Panic. I hit enter on boot: and in a quick second the 'kernel panic' appears.
The 'Memtest' resulted in so much error in so many diff. addresses I can't even explain. The notebook has 512M extended RAM and 400M base mem. I noticed that the errors where most showing in the first part of Mem so I decided to remove the extended mem and just test the base mem. All the errors were produced again.
This Toshiba notebook has recently been over-heating. A search on Toshiba support suggested upgrading BIOS. Well I kinda laughed at the support forums 'coz they talk more about windows issues like " The Mail Icon is Missing in Control Panel when Microsoft Outlook Express is Load" etc etc.
I next tried searching for the location of this base Mem module which as till now i have not succeded in finding. There are no Toshiba Support Centers around here, it was bought in a diff country.
What Next?